


Like snow, softly drowning.

by burgundytwill (VinWrit)



Series: Mini-fic Monday (Wednesday) [1]
Category: Slow Show (Mia-ugly), Warlock (TV) - Fandom, Warlock-the-scripts script!’verse
Genre: Contains spoilers for s1e04 “Snake Oil.”, Erasmus does some thinking, Gen, Introspection, Minific, found-family adjacent, from the script’verse canon, let Erasmus be happy 2k20, request fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:54:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23098177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VinWrit/pseuds/burgundytwill
Summary: Winter falls slowly outside Neath.
Relationships: Erasmus & Julia Chattox
Series: Mini-fic Monday (Wednesday) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1660177
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	Like snow, softly drowning.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a request from an anon on the script blog, @warlock-the-scripts on tumblr.

  
Winter falls slowly here, outside Neath. He finds that it’s difficult, some days. Erasmus isn’t getting any younger - this winter has his joints stiff and aching, the cold conspiring against him in his uncomfortable early-middle-age.

Still. It’s this, or a nice warm cell near the chopping-block and the pyres. He knows which he’d prefer. 

Erasmus sits by the fire, and watches Julia, her face cast in too-red firelight in this early-morning sombreness, the wind brushing the sandy earth away like so much ash. She’s tired; worn-thin and wrung-out with the running of it, this race against the cold, against time. 

He doesn’t comment on that spoiled ground that sticks beneath her boot-heels like turned milk, doesn’t draw her attention to the unnatural soil and the work of necromancers.

He had stolen a warm sleeping-fur to line the tent’s floor and help her a little; but when he’d poked his head in to check on her before sunrise, she had been tossing and turning, icy and pale, shaking in an uneasy sleep.

She’s capable, calm now, collected; she sprawls loosely on a tuffet outside her tent , close to the blaze in the fire pit, lazily flicking her fingers into the flames and watching as they take on a blue tint where flesh meets fire, the world bowing slightly to her will. It’s a party trick, sly magic; this grove is one of yew and oak and leaden pine, and they are marginally safer here from the men and dogs. 

Erasmus is further away, bundled up in his cloak, his bedroll at his feet; half-hidden in the entrance to the quick lean-to he’d put up when they’d got back here, and feeling remarkably like a soldier here for war. The frost is thick on the ground, now, although his boots leave little trace in it; and the amulet about his neck is heavy, the brass cold over the dark twill of his tunic. 

Erasmus is grateful. In the space before sunrise he sees every branch, every pricked-up hair on the back of his hands; he can see where a rabbit hangs, caught in one of their traps. 

He feels like a rabbit before a lion as he contemplates Neath, and what lies before them. It had been a short journey, all things considered. Five days. Record time.

He had thought, of course, that he’d left everything behind. 

The encounter in Hathbryhl had seen to that, had dashed his fleeting and newly-fledged hopes to the ground like runt-chicks cast from a nest.

Still. Erasmus feels an odd sort of commitment since their hurried flight, a snarling thing that sulks behind his lungs and reluctantly admits to a grudging admiration for the other. She had asked nothing. 

He can appreciate silence. She’s strong, and he’s almost sad to leave her and her wit behind, here in the midst of everything she’s been looking for. 

Julia stares on into the flames, and Erasmus watches, and waits for any other sign of life. 


End file.
